MOJO magazine’s 2015 Book of the Year, the outrageous true story of the Hollywood Brats—the greatest punk band you've never heard of—brilliantly told by founding member Andrew Matheson With only a guitar, a tatty copy of the Melody Maker , and his template for the perfect band, Andrew Matheson set out, in 1971, to make music history. His band, the Hollywood Brats, were pre-punk prophets—uncompromising, ultrathin, wild, and untamable. Thrown into the crazy world of the 1970s London music scene, the Brats recorded one genius-but-ignored album and ultimately fell foul of the crooks who ran a music industry that just wasn't quite ready for the punk revolution. Directly inspiring Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols, and the Clash, the Hollywood Brats imploded too soon to share in the glory. Sick On You is a startling, funny, and incredibly entertaining period memoir about never quite achieving success despite flying so close to greatness. “An exuberant memoir that doubles as slapstick comedy…. A riotous portrait of a naive rocker with a penchant for foolishness, Sick on You is packed with louche behavior, provocative musicianship, and outrageous social gaffes…. Matheson writes with the jagged verve he once sought from his band…. He has turned his punk rock travails into an enormously likable memoir.” —Kevin Canfield, The Washington Post “True, proper Rock ‘n’ Roll. A funny, sad, superbly written saga. This book is great.”  —Bob Geldof “A rueful, funny memoir of a doomed life in rock 'n' roll…. Matheson writes with an easy, loping gait…a vivid account of a bygone musical era.” — Kirkus Reviews “Andrew Matheson’s concise, hilarious memoir tells the pleasure and pain of being an unheralded pioneer.”  —Jon Savage, author of England’s Dreaming   “The greatest rock ’n’ roll story you’ve never heard.” —John Niven, author of Kill Your Friends   “The Hollywood Brats are a folk legend; they were doing what they were doing before anybody. This is one of the great rock ’n’ roll hard-luck stories, by turns shocking and hilarious.”  —Bob Stanley, author of Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Andrew Matheson was a founding member of the Hollywood Brats, the band that never really was, but that did what it could from 1971 to 1975. He has since been writing and recording music, producing, publishing magazine articles, and drinking pints. ***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof*** Copyright © 2016 Andrew Matheson 1971 I London. What’s it like, this town in July 1971? This town just past the fag end of the sixties? This so-called “Swinging London?” Let me tell you, it’s bloody marvelous. It is tawdry and garish, filthy and littered and chokingly diesel per- fumed. It is filled with a thousand hucksters and shysters and gypsy girls in Piccadilly with sprigs of heather already pinned to your lapel before you can protest, palms held out and a “cross my palm with silver, for luck,” the veiled, unsubtle threat of misfortune should you not, with coin, comply. It is teeming with girls and the girls are stunning, teetering around in stack-heeled, knee- high boots, in suede micro-mini skirts with gossamer scarves, Cleopatra eye- liner underlining fluttering Twiggy lashes. Union Jacks are everywhere, flapping amid the gargoyles on the stone buildings, hanging in whipping-in-the-wind plastic rows on the shops and stalls, on T-shirts, knickers, tea towels, socks, ashtrays, salt and pepper shakers, bowler hats, bobbies’ hats. Rule Britannia. Britannia rules the airwaves. Maybe. “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” by Middle of the Road, a song that makes you want to drive spikes into your ears and crucify your brain, hits number one in the charts and stays there. The Beatles are dead. Poor, pure, blond, bitchy Brian drowned. Jimi choked. Morrison, reduced from a pretentious West Coast pseudo-poet, albeit with great hair and a svelte physique, to a bloated, bearded metaphor, soon to float, barely, in a Paris bathtub. Hippies run the show: beards and denim and crap music with mind- numbing guitar solos and daft, boring, nonsensical lyrics; drummers allowed to thump their stupid tubs alone on stage for fifteen minutes while everyone else takes a break. Gongs, for Christ’s sake. Gongs. Incense. Double bass drums. Who looks good? Nobody looks good. Who sounds good? Nobody sounds good. My grand plan is to create a band to rectify that situation. Wipe the slate clean. But first I must find some digs. I haven’t been in London since my parents kidnapped me as a child, dragging me, kicking and screaming in a sack, to Northern Ontario. Word is that an agency is the best bet so there I go. The Greek lady behind the desk says that what I am seeking in terms of accommodation (not much) will cost between six and ten quid a week. No sweat, I’ve got the grand in hand. She reaches over her shoulder and sells me a London A–Z, slips a few addresses in my hand and sends me all over town to see bedsits. But none do I see. As soon as t